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Thursday, May 24, 2018

For 40 years, the DanceAfrica Festival meant Baba Chuck Davis. As the founder and, until 2015, sole artistic director of the festival, he represented the festival, body and soul. With his 6-foot-5 height, booming voice, and regal dashikis, he was hard to miss on and off stage.

But Baba Chuck passed away at the age of 80 just before last year’s festival. For the first time, this year’s festival has been completely planned and will be held without his presence. His hand-picked successor Abdel R. Salaam is now writing the next chapter of this beloved tradition.

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

On Tue, May 29, we're pleased to welcome Valeria Luiselli–the Mexico City-born author of Tell Me How It Ends and The Story of My Teeth–to BAMcafé for our Eat, Drink & Be Literary series. For those of you who've never attended an EDBL before, we thought it'd be helpful to provide a short overview of the program so you'll know what to expect!

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

By Molly Silberberg

Picture being in your living room with your favorite author. Now add a dinner prepared for you, plentiful wine, a guest list that is taken care of, and an elegant room requiring no clean up by you. Get yourself to BAMcafé for Eat, Drink & Be Literary and you’re set for the evening!

Eat, Drink & Be Literary is not your average book event. Presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation, the series celebrates some of today’s leading authors in an intimate setting that turns the private act of reading into a shared moment of gathering.

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

This year’s DanceAfrica performance offers a taste of the rhythm and spirit of South Africa, acknowledging Nelson Mandela’s centennial birthday and the contributions of freedom fighters past and present. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #DanceAfrica. Ago! Amée!

Friday, May 11, 2018

For last month's production of King Lear, members of the Royal Shakespeare Company traveled from London to perform at the BAM Harvey Theater. But many of the actors in the run came from just a train ride away—all non-speaking roles were cast locally via an open call to the BAM community and were filled by writers, students, BAM ushers, actors, and folks who hadn't performed in front of an audience in decades. We caught up with the members of the Community Chorus during the final week of the run to learn more about their experiences, backstage secrets, and which Lear characters they identify with most.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

The Watermelon Woman, courtesy of First Run Features; Imitation of Life, courtesy of Universal Pictures

It is no secret that the cinema canon has historically skewed toward lionizing the white, male auteur. Beyond the Canon is a monthly series that seeks to question that history and broaden horizons by pairing one much-loved, highly regarded, canonized classic with a thematically or stylistically-related—and equally brilliant—work by a filmmaker traditionally excluded from that discussion. This month’s double feature pairs Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996) with John M. Stahl’s Imitation of Life (1934).

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Gina Dyches (front row, 3rd from right) with most of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. Photo courtesy the artist.

By David Hsieh

Gina Dyches is a special events coordinator at BAM and an accomplished violinist freelancing around New York City. What do the two jobs have in common? They both require “great organizational skills,” according to Gina. What about another? “They are the coolest!” A case in point: at BAM, she is helping to plan a gala honoring Jeremy Irons and Darren Aronofsky, but as a violinist, she played in one of the biggest TV events of the year—Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert, which aired on Easter night on NBC.

Playing a rock musical broadcast live on network television is not what Gina had dreamed of when she picked up a violin as a shy fourth grader in a Phoenix suburb public school. Nor was living in New York and working at one of the premier contemporary performing art presenters in the world! Gina tells us how she got here.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Sir Richard Eyre directs Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville in Eugene O’Neill’s devastating Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork about love, illness, and addiction. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #LongDaysJourneyIntoNight.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

BAM Education connects learning with creativity, engaging imagination by encouraging self-expression through in- and after-school programs for students and teachers; workshops; and offerings for audiences of all ages. In a continuing effort to develop arts-based, justice-oriented programs that promote engagement and empowerment for young people, BAM Education created the Black Male Achievement Program (BMAP) in 2013. The program, largely funded by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, was inspired by classroom discussions on media literacy, black male identity, and cultural representation.

BMAP functions as a co-teaching model, with two teaching artists working collaboratively in a classroom. During these twice-weekly sessions, the students develop writing, performance, and critical media literacy skills by mining popular cultural texts. In their studies of cultural representations––and misrepresentations––they begin to develop their own view on black masculinity. “This communication is the primary vehicle for critical investigations of the world we live in,” says Marcus Small, a current BMAP teaching artist. “It’s rare that males of color are able to engage in this dialogue absent of tension, danger, and unhealthy consequences.”

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

In 1941, for their 12th wedding anniversary, Eugene O’Neill gave his wife Carlotta a gift that’s kept on giving—more to the world than to the wife: a quasi-autobiographical “play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood.” When Long Day’s Journey Into Night was publicly unwrapped at last on Broadway in 1956, it won the playwright—posthumously—his fourth Pulitzer Prize (more than anyone else) and his first Tony.

Generally regarded as O’Neill’s masterpiece, the drama has been consistently performed throughout the world. Two years ago, while Gabriel Byrne and a Tony-winning Jessica Lange were charging away on all cylinders in the play’s sixth Broadway production, director Richard Eyre was jump-starting a Bristol Old Vic edition in England with Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville. The trio recently reactivated that version on the West End at London’s Wyndham’s Theater and will be bringing it to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater May 8—27.